James Paterson (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm very pleased to rise to speak on the Discrimination Free Schools Bill 2018. I'm pleased to do so because it provides me with an opportunity to reassure people who may have been concerned by inaccurate media reporting in the past week on this issue. Before I get into the detail, I want to start with a broader, more fundamental point. As Australians, we are united by many things, but we also have disagreements. That is completely normal in any free society.

One area where we do disagree is matters of faith and morality. That is to be expected when we come from many different backgrounds. That disagreement, on its own, is not necessarily a problem. We do, however, have to find a framework to manage those differences that allows us to happily co-exist and live alongside each other, even though we disagree on some things. We need to do so in a way that respects the fundamental dignity of every Australian. Every Australian, whatever their beliefs, deserves to be treated with equal respect. They also deserve equal freedom to live their own lives according to their own values. No Australian should seek to impose on other Australians values that they don't share. We can, of course, do our best to persuade each other to our world view. But, if we are unsuccessful, we shouldn't resort to other means to force people to live as we choose to live. Effectively, what that means is that we need to accept our society is pluralistic. We can accommodate people of different views comfortably and happily if we all respect each other's freedom to live our own lives according to our own values. That does not require you to agree with or endorse other people's views. It does mean, though, that if you wish to enjoy your own freedom you have to respect the freedom of others, too. I think this is an intrinsically Australian trait. Almost all of us have a live-and-let-live attitude.

How does this apply to the bill before the Senate today? There are two groups of Australians who take a great interest in this issue. One group is gay Australians and their friends and families. The other group is people of faith. I want to reassure both. Firstly, I say to LGBTI kids: you might have read somewhere that someone wants to kick you out of school because you are gay; nothing could be further from the truth. I've been very actively involved in the religious freedom debate. I've met, corresponded with and heard from more people than I could count about religious liberty. In all that time, no-one, not once, has ever asked me to make it easier to kick gay kids out of school. Never. If they had, I would have told them, politely, where to go. I know that all my colleagues would have done the same. I know that life is not always easy for you. Nobody wants to make it any harder. You deserve to have the same right as anyone else to go to school without the fear of expulsion.

There is no proposal in the Ruddock review or anywhere else to make it easier to kick gay kids out of school. In fact, the Ruddock review actually recommends that the existing powers to do so should be substantially narrowed. The government will go one step further and will get rid of them altogether. We are doing so because a law that singles out gay kids has no place in Australia, and we're doing so with the full support of people of faith, their schools and their communities. They have told us that that this is a power that they don't use and don't want. They are not the intolerant bigots that they are sometimes unfairly made out to be. Incidentally, the law which permitted this at a federal level was in fact introduced by the former Gillard government and by the then Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus. This week, Labor senators have called this outdated. Australia certainly has changed since 2013, but not that much. It wasn't appropriate then, it's not appropriate now and our government will get rid of it.

The second group of people I want to reassure are people of faith. Your rights are no less important than those of any other Australian. Although I'm not personally religious, I know that, whatever your faith tradition, you are good Australians. You are not bigots, you are not reactionaries and you are not monolithic. You disagree with other people of faith as much as any other Australian, and I know you don't like all being put in one basket as if you were all the same. The government will act to protect your religious freedoms. We will do so because religious freedom is one of our most fundamental and cherished freedoms, although, sadly, today it is not well understood.

Religious freedom is the freedom to have faith, to not have faith, to change your faith or to leave your faith if you wish. It is a freedom for all Australians to enjoy equally and not just a freedom for those Australians who choose to worship on a weekly basis. We all have an interest in maintaining this freedom, regardless of our own beliefs. Societies without religious freedom are not societies any of us would want to live in, whether we are believers or not. Some societies have mandated one state religion. Others have banned religion altogether. Others still have made it a crime to change or leave your religion. What they have in common is that individual rights have been horribly trampled. None of us want to see Australia go down that road.

Religious freedom is also not just the freedom to believe in your faith. For people of faith, it is not sufficient just to believe. To live a life of integrity as a person of faith also means to live out those values in the world. Your actions, too, need to reflect your deepest and most sincerely held convictions. Forcing you to act contrary to them does limit your religious freedom. In this way, religious freedom is not really just about religion; it also encompasses free speech, freedom of association and freedom of conscience. That's not a coincidence. All of those fundamental freedoms—speech, association and conscience—were developed in the West in conjunction with, and as a result of, our evolving ideas about religious freedom. Philosophers like John Milton and John Locke developed our ideas about free speech in an explicitly religious context. For them, the question of the day was whether they should be free to speak about and debate religious questions. As Milton says:

Give me the liberty to know, to utter and to argue freely according to conscience, above all liberties.

Obviously, our understanding of free speech today is much broader. It is not just for religious debates but for all issues of concern to Australians. But free speech remains an essential freedom for the maintenance of religious freedom. How can any of us exercise our right to believe, not believe or change our beliefs if we don't have the opportunity to hear competing ideas about faith?

Freedom of association is a particularly relevant component of religious freedom in the context of this bill. In a pluralistic society, freedom of association is a vital freedom that people use to come together with others who share their values in order to give expression to those values. Religious schools are a good example of that. Parents send their kids to faith based schools for many reasons. One important reason is that they want to ensure that their children are raised in their faith tradition and according to their values. It's a right that all parents share.

Like any other organisation with a mission, it is vitally important that faith based schools are able to ensure that their staff share the values of the school and are willing and able to teach those values to their students. Not every teacher will want to do this. In a pluralistic society, that's okay. There are lots of other schools where that will not be a problem. But it would be wrong to force a school to hire teachers who do not support, or were unwilling to teach, the values of the school. It would undermine their mission. It would undermine school choice—something that the Liberal and National parties strongly support. Any organisation founded with a purpose deserves that same freedom. It would be equally wrong, for example, to force an LGBTI organisation to employ someone who was opposed to gay rights. The government understands how important this freedom is to faith based schools. We will ensure that this freedom remains protected in Australia.

I want to make one final broader observation about the Ruddock review and the process of addressing concerns Australians have about religious freedom. For some weeks now, people have demanded that the review should be released in full. Then, unfortunately, it appeared in a partial form in the media. The inaccurate reporting we have seen since and the concern that this has created in the community demonstrate exactly why a cautious approach is warranted. This is a complex area of law. It is not easily reduced to a sound bite. It understandably attracts strong views. It's entirely appropriate that the report be released in conjunction with the government response to that report, to ensure that there's no unnecessary panic about what the government might do in responding to that report. That's a process our Attorney-General, Christian Porter, is leading. I have complete confidence in his capacity do so. It would be unwise for any government to rush its response in order to meet on artificial political deadline. The best policy which resolves the sincere hopes and concerns that Australians have about this issue is most likely to come from careful consideration and proper process, not kneejerk responses to media-induced panics.

It's unfortunate that the heat and light of this debate so far has largely been confined to one recommendation. It gives the misleading impression that this is the only area of interest or concern to people of faith when it comes to religious freedom. The truth is that there are much broader and often less contentious areas which are also of very significant importance. We cannot and will not allow this to derail our efforts to better protect religious freedom in Australia. There will be plenty of time for a proper public debate about these broader issues, and the normal government and parliamentary consultation processes, to ensure that all Australians have input into the final outcome. Ultimately, what we seek to do is ensure that all Australians are able to live with dignity and respect according to their own values. That should not be beyond our ability.